Recipe: Green Tea Creme Brulee

For Thanksgiving I made green tea creme brulee, and from the feedback I received it was a complete success! It was actually really simple to make, and I did it almost the exact same way as I made the regular vanilla creme brulee. Except if you compare the pictures, you’ll see that I upgraded to real ramekins this time and the caramelized sugar looks a lot better. I’m moving on up in the world with my fancy ramekins (bought a pack of 12 at Smart & Final for $13).

First I brought a quart of heavy cream to boil on medium high heat. You have to watch it carefully when it’s near boil because it will explode everywhere like a bubbling volcano if you don’t take it off the heat. I added a little vanilla extract to the heavy cream while it boiled, but that’s not really necessary. In fact, I felt like it took away from some of the green tea taste. Once at a boil, take it off the heat and let it cool for a bit.

While the cream was boiling/cooling, I whisked together 7 egg yolks and a half cup of sugar. I still found it a little sweet, so next time I would use a little less sugar, but that’s to your own preference. When the mixture became a light yellowish color, I added in Matcha Green Tea Powder. This green tea powder is traditionally used in Japanese tea ceremonies (from what google told me) and can be quite expensive (probably because I bought mine at Whole Foods). I threw in about 2 tablespoons of the green tea powder into the yolk/sugar mix and whisked some more until the mixture had a green consistency.

Next, I slowly poured the heavy cream into the yolk/sugar/green tea batter one ladle-full at a time while mixing it together with a spatula. You want to do this slowly because you don’t want air bubbles to form. After that was completed, I poured the mixture into ramekins and placed the ramekins in deep baking pans. I filled the baking pans with hot water until it reached the middle of the ramekin in height. Finally, I baked the creme brulee for about 45 minutes at 350F degrees. When that was done, I covered them up and put it in the fridge to let it set. You can leave it in the fridge anywhere from a few hours to 3 days.

And for the best part – the caramelized sugar on top that you crack – you can either use a fancy creme brulee torch or be like a normal person and just use the broiler in the oven. The whole point of a broiler is to get the upper heat coils of the oven super hot (around 500F degrees or more) so turn it on and let it heat up. While that’s happen, put a light layer or brown sugar on top of the set creme brulee. I found brown sugar tasted a lot better. Also, make sure you don’t put too much sugar on because too much could actually make it too sweet and inedible. Put the creme brulee in the second to top rack in the oven and watch it carefully. The sugar should melt in a minute or two and you don’t want to let it burn too much. Once done, take it out of the oven and let it cool so the sugar can harden before eating.

And there it is, green tea creme brulee just like the restaurants! Everyone that tasted it said it was really good – including two people from Japan. Maybe I should start my own creme brulee business.